If I were to break it down into percentages, I assign blame like this:

50% on Fewell
25% on poor tackling
15% on the DL being old/injured/overrated
10% on overall age of the defense

I think coaching can only do so much, bc at the end of the day Fewell's terrible defense would still work if the DL performed and if our tackling wasn't awful. But those 2 things didn't happen.

And to be fair to Fewell, we were 12th in points allowed, which is ultimately the more important statistic. Yardage doesn't matter as much as points, so if we're 12th in points allowed and 1st in turnovers, which we were, it wasn't as bad as we think.

Still no excuse, Fewell had a unit that could be a top 5 unit in the league but his lack of adjustments and poor blitzing concepts ultimately hurt our team.

But let's not lose sight of the big picture here. We are a bad defense bc we are terrible at tackling, and our DL is overrated. Tuck is no longer any good, Osi is a situational pass rusher, Kiwi is average, and our DTs are average (and hurt this past year with little to no depth behind them). Couple an average year from JPP and you get a below average defense.

Now I give Fewell 50% blame bc of his lack of adjustments, my overall disagreement with his system, and bc I blame him some for our tackling issues. I think you have to blame the coaches some for tackling. Bc while I strongly feel that tackling is something that must translate from college to the pros bc it's not taught by NFL coaches, I still have to assign blame to the coaches for not emphasizing it. At least try to teach technique, or emphasize tackling in team meetings, preach it day in and day out. I don't think that's happening with Fewell in charge.

Our tackling was significantly better under Spags. I think the gang tackling concept that Cover 2 teams employ often hurts your teams tackling bc nobody takes accountability for the tackle. They all assume that someone is coming to help out so they don't have to form tackle, they can go for the big hit and hope the "help" cleans up behind them.

This concept is poor and leads to the poor tackling we've been seeing. And it's taught.

John Mara has publically stated that Cruz is asking for too much money. I don't like where this is going.

I really don't want to play games with his contract. If we tender him, I can see a real possibility of some team giving him a huge contract we can't match. The Patriots would be my nightmare. They are probably parting ways with Welker, and Cruz would be the perfect replacement. Their first rounder is low enough that I think they would consider it as well.

We need to just sign him to a contract, unless his salary demands are incredibly high.

I really don't want to play games with his contract. If we tender him, I can see a real possibility of some team giving him a huge contract we can't match. The Patriots would be my nightmare. They are probably parting ways with Welker, and Cruz would be the perfect replacement. Their first rounder is low enough that I think they would consider it as well.

We need to just sign him to a contract, unless his salary demands are incredibly high.

I doubt we tender him, more likely in my opinion to franchise and trade him.

the problem is that there are teams like Miami and Cleveland with huge buckets of $$ and big needs at WR.

If I were to break it down into percentages, I assign blame like this:

50% on Fewell
25% on poor tackling
15% on the DL being old/injured/overrated
10% on overall age of the defense

I think coaching can only do so much, bc at the end of the day Fewell's terrible defense would still work if the DL performed and if our tackling wasn't awful. But those 2 things didn't happen.

And to be fair to Fewell, we were 12th in points allowed, which is ultimately the more important statistic. Yardage doesn't matter as much as points, so if we're 12th in points allowed and 1st in turnovers, which we were, it wasn't as bad as we think.

Still no excuse, Fewell had a unit that could be a top 5 unit in the league but his lack of adjustments and poor blitzing concepts ultimately hurt our team.

But let's not lose sight of the big picture here. We are a bad defense bc we are terrible at tackling, and our DL is overrated. Tuck is no longer any good, Osi is a situational pass rusher, Kiwi is average, and our DTs are average (and hurt this past year with little to no depth behind them). Couple an average year from JPP and you get a below average defense.

Now I give Fewell 50% blame bc of his lack of adjustments, my overall disagreement with his system, and bc I blame him some for our tackling issues. I think you have to blame the coaches some for tackling. Bc while I strongly feel that tackling is something that must translate from college to the pros bc it's not taught by NFL coaches, I still have to assign blame to the coaches for not emphasizing it. At least try to teach technique, or emphasize tackling in team meetings, preach it day in and day out. I don't think that's happening with Fewell in charge.

Our tackling was significantly better under Spags. I think the gang tackling concept that Cover 2 teams employ often hurts your teams tackling bc nobody takes accountability for the tackle. They all assume that someone is coming to help out so they don't have to form tackle, they can go for the big hit and hope the "help" cleans up behind them.

This concept is poor and leads to the poor tackling we've been seeing. And it's taught.

That's why I blame Fewell for that.

Nice synopsis

I keep wondering if our poor tackling is acerbated by the practice limitations in the offseason

Cruz wants to stay and we want him to stay. If we can't reach a deal we will franchise him and work out a deal. Trust me, if we slap the tag on him and get more time to negotiate we will be able to reach a fair deal.

I'm not surprised. I had a feeling Cruz is asking for the farm. I hope we keep him obviously, but we have to be smart with our money. In Eli I trust.

I think if Cruz was going to budge, a deal would have been done. He wants his big payday.

We aren't going to break the bank for Cruz, nor should we.

I hope he is back, but we can move on without him.

The fact is the WR draft class despite being deep, lacks the elite talent along with some teams having a huge amount of cap room. I could easily see a team willing to give up a first round pick for Cruz

Cruz wants to stay and we want him to stay. If we can't reach a deal we will franchise him and work out a deal. Trust me, if we slap the tag on him and get more time to negotiate we will be able to reach a fair deal.

If we can't afford a deal, what makes you think we can afford a franchise tag?

last year the franchise tag was $9.515 million, even then it is a one year stop gap. Using a franchise tag a second time, it starts ballooning.

I think Cruz is eyeing the kind of deal signed my Vincent Jackson (which had a $15,432,000 cap number)

10 mill a season is too rich for Cruz. I want him back bad, but we have to keep in mind what that salary does to the rest of the team. Also remember we have Eli. Eli will be Eli with or without him.

The slot WR is instrumental to our offenses success. Everything we do in this offense is predicated by the slot WR so losing Cruz would dramatically impact our offense for the short term but I have faith that Eli would make it work. It's Eli. He's done it before he'll do it again.